This Very Odd Armored Vehicle Was Built by a Ghanaian Minister

A religious organization in the African nation of Ghana has built its own armored car. Designed for military duties including peacekeeping, the Katanka Armored Car is, well, odd.

The Katanka is the brainchild of Kwadwo Safo, also known as African Star. Safo is a Christian minister in Ghana and the owner of the Katanka group of companies. Safo is also the inventor of the Katantka sport utility vehicles.

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The YouTube video below was apparently taken at a demonstration of the Katanka, which featured members of the Ghanaian military in the audience. We don't know what the announcer is saying, but given the comments at YouTube and at this web site, we can make some educated guesses. Even still, some aspects of the Katanka are so baffling we're still left scratching our heads.

The Katanka appears to be made of unpainted sheet metal, with faceting that may give radar-evading qualities—or not. The level of armored protection the sheet metal gives is unknown—we don't know how thick the metal is, and bullet penetration can vary greatly depending on angle of impact.

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The vehicle has four small road wheels—again, an odd choice for an armored car that's going to be carrying a lot of weight over presumably bumpy terrain. The upper two-thirds of the armored car is actually a turret that features, for no immediately apparent reason, extendable aircraft-type wings.

The Katanka bristles with what appears to be armament. At one point a flame emanates from the vehicle, meaning the Kantaka may have a flamethrower (or it may have simply caught fire). Model rockets—not RPG-type rockets, but Testors-type hobby rockets—bristle from a rear hatch. And the vehicle appears to dispense spherical "time bombs" that look like a bit like jawbreakers.

There appear to be no hatches, cameras, or vision ports on the Katanka, leading to speculation it is an unmanned vehicle. Other articles indicate the vehicle has a closed-circuit TV system inside, but someone has to be pushing those time bombs out by hand.

Even after watching this video several times, we really have no idea how the Katanka would perform in battle. The most we can say is there's definitely nothing out there that looks quite like it.